From: "Muscio, Chris" <chris.muscio-AT-wcom.co.uk>
Subject: RE: society and technology
Date: Mon, 16 Oct 2000 09:59:04 +0100


Not only the mobile phone but also the laptop and RAS access craete the
environment of 24x7 slavery to a new set of masters. Capital is so clever
that the masters are us. We own shares through pensions funds etc., the
corporation is dedicated to increasing shareholder value, we are all slaves
to the corporation. The only comfort and light I have at the end of the
tunnel is that I am definitely 'deviant'. Who in their right mind would want
to be a member of this 'non-deviant' society?

-----Original Message-----
From: Brad McCormick, Ed.D. [mailto:bradmcc-AT-cloud9.net]
Sent: 15 October 2000 17:58
To: technology-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
Cc: chris.muscio-AT-wcom.co.uk; lyotard; steve.brockbank-AT-aduronet.com
Subject: Re: society and technology


sdv wrote:
> 
> The societies of confinement, of discipline and the prophecies of the
> society of self-discipline denounced by MICHEL FOUCAULT are being
> succeeded by the societies of control delineated by GILLES DELEUZE.

Is there no room here to mention the more "sober" prose
style and content of Jacques Ellul's works?

> 
> They have recently authorized the use of electronic tagging devices on
> prisoners released on parole, or on community sentences. These tracking
> devices enable the state (and shortly after that the transnational
> corporations) to locate them at any point, consequently avoiding further
> pressure on the already over crowded prison system (into which people
> are put for no apparant reason). These initial practices which will
> undoubtedly be extended to other categories of deviants, to any who do
> not fit within the normal  are today described as humanitarian.  The
> step beyond this of course is to tag those who are regarded as
> extra-valuable, economically valuable of course

I'm not so sure this is so new, although recent advances in
reduction of packaging size of computer circuitry and enhanced
wireless services certainly "help"....

The main "population" which comes to my mind is *students*,
and the tailoring of curriculum and testing to "individuals".
The earliest computerized pedagogy programs (before 1984) boasted
of their ability -- unlike human and other previous educational
delivery systems -- to dynamically adapt to each student's
particular learning needs (e.g., providing extra instruction
and practice exercises wherever a student got a wrong answer).

Thoughts such as these lead to an hypothesis: We are approaching
a society in which *everyone* is a "deviant", or, stated
the other way around: Each individual is correlated
with a norm unique to
him or her self -- a kind of "eidos" to which they can
at best approximate but never fully
actualize (but not exactly as Plato, Kant or Hegel et al.
might have meant this...)....

These systems teach us that "individualization" is not necessarily
an improvement in *human[e]ization* -- understood in the
rich sense of someone like Ellul or Paolo Freire or Hannah Arendt....

Individual tailorization of education (and probably everything
else...) can become a newer-and-better Taylorism.

A very helpful resource in trying to cope with this stuff
is the sociologist Erving Goffman's work on how persons learn
to "work" systems they cannot directly make more amenable to
their needs and aspirations.

Also, there is Joseph Weizenbaum's still to my knowledge
unsurpassed book (1976, Freeman): _Computer Power and Human
Reason: From judgment to calculation_.

> 
> And what can we say of the love of the mobile phone that post-industrial
> corporations have, the mobile phone which allows them to abolish the
> distinction between working hours and private life for their employees,
> consultants and contractors?

I have a friend who is a computer "genius", and he, at least 20
years ago, already said that his whole life was a single
seamless cloth, in which cooking a gourmet meal at home was
work and writing computer code for his "employer" was re[-]creation.

But he meant something very different by this: He meant that
everything he did was an occasion to strive to bring more
*quality* into the world (as in _Zen and the Art of Motorcycle 
Maintenance_, e.g.) and also to learn more about who he was.

Hannah Arendt also had something relevant to say here, again,
against the "grain" of the way all this is generally understood
or at least transmitted via "communication channels" theses days:
She said that, for the classical Greeks, the word "private"
meant *de*prived -- that what was not part of the public space
of speech and action ("the polis") was considered by the
classical Greeks to be less than fully human.  A Greek citizen
would rather have been strapped for cash but still able to
spend his time in the agora, than to be a Donald Tr-mp, who
would surely have been categorized unanimously by the
citizens of the polis as a "banausos" (one whose concerns
did not rise above "pragmatic agenda" and economics -- which
derives from "oikos", i.e., hearth and home, which was the "darkness"
in which women and slaves carried on their [less than
fully human, sic] existence).

> Here in Britain we have recently
> introduced zero-hour contracts which are supplied with a mobile phone.
> When the company needs you it calls you and you come running.
[snip]

When I was looking for a job last year, a headhunter
told me I was "too rigid", e.g., for not being willing to
accept 3 hours a day commuting.  He gave me the
example of his wife, who was working on a project that everyone
knew would never "ship", but which everyone involved had
to continue to *pretend* would, so that they worked late
into the evenings and on weekends to try to make the
phantasmogorical "deadline" (I take the word "deadline" literally
to mean: a line that kills...).

The headhunter told me that, in today's job market, if the
boss says: "Jump!", you ask: "How high?"  (Of course this
man was wrong: Even to make the boss ask you to jump, instead of
anticipating his fantasy so he doesn't even have to ask for it,
is already to earn a "black mark" on one's record! --Except
for a few "die hard" bosses, who, like one I had ca. 30 years ago,
explicitly tell you: "I want to see asses and elbows.")

Beepers and cell phones?  In my opinion: heart attack triggers.  

"Yours in discourse...."

+\brad mccormick

-- 
  Let your light so shine before men, 
              that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)

  Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)

<![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / bradmcc-AT-cloud9.net
  914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua NY 10514-3403 USA
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